


Doubt

by Anonymous



Category: Pokemon Mystery Dungeon
Genre: Amnesia, Angst, Canon Child Abduction, Canon-Typical Violence, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Female Friendship, Gen, Gen or Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-24
Updated: 2014-12-24
Packaged: 2018-03-03 06:55:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,465
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2842049
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tauna knows who she is now: she's a proud member of the Wigglytuff Guild, someone who works hard every day to help others and explore the wide world - it's who she was before that's causing her trouble. Maybe talking to her partner will help.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Doubt

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TeaRoses](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TeaRoses/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide!
> 
> This story starts at the end of the Drowzee mission, so there's some violence and Azurill's abduction is mentioned.

“I’m not doing anything wrong!”

“Like hell you’re not!” Tauna shouted, before spitting a fireball and rolling out of the way of Drowzee’s retaliation. “You kidnap Azurill, you bring him out here to do god knows what. Can’t you see why we might find that suspicious?”

Jumping back to avoid another lunging attack, she settled back into a defensive stance and took a quick look over towards Kiraoi, who was holding Azurill over to one side of the clearing to protect Azurill from being caught in the crossfire from the fight. 

“But I’m not! All I wanted to do was get that crystal, and I’m too big to fit in the tunnel! I knew your Guild wouldn’t help me, you never have before!”

“Why not?” Tauna asked, quieter than before. Drowzee had gone a few moments without moving to attack, and if she could hold his attention long enough to just get a few steps closer… 

“What do you think would have happened? How was I supposed to just walk up to the building and say, ‘Hey, I’ve found this priceless gem but I need some help retrieving it, oh and by the way, yes I am the same guy you beat up last month?’ How well would that have gone down?”

Taking another careful step forward, Tauna forced a sympathetic frown. “What happened last month? Why did you get in trouble then?” Taking a slow, deep breath, she sucked her back flames lower to prepare for spinning around and blasting them back out, when all of a sudden she stalled in her place, unsure. She hadn’t noticed it before, too busy trying to read his movements to predict whether or not he was going to attack, but sometime in their exchange Drowzee had started to cry. 

“I…” she stammered, eyes dipping to the ground and balance lost. “I don’t-“

“Tauna, watch out!”

“What?”

She looked back up, trying to avoid whatever threat Kiraoi had spotted, but she was too slow – Drowzee’s headbutt caught her right on her brow, causing a wave of pain to lance out through her head and down her snout and briefly blinding her in that eye. Gasping and clutching at her face and snout, she curled over onto the ground until the worst of the pain had stopped. She mustn’t be down for long, she had to get back up, to keep fighting – Kiraoi hated fighting, was so nervous by herself, needed Tauna to keep her safe, but right now that was just impossible. 

Tauna forced her other eye open catching a brief glimpse of Drowzee stood over her, arm swung back in preparation for another attack. She tried to move, tried to get up or at least roll to one side to avoid it, but all she could do was shield herself as best she could and brace for another attack.

Suddenly, there was a crash, and Drowzee’s shadow fell away from her. Hearing a scream, Tauna lifted her head and opened her eyes, seeing the opponent laid flat on his back a few feet in front of her. Kiraoi, panting hard, was getting back to her feet in front of him. 

“Don’t you dare hurt my friend! Don’t you dare! I’ll take you down myself, I will!”

Groaning, Drowzee hauled himself back to his feet. “Oh, you will? You didn’t seem so tough earlier.” He casually swung an arm towards her, and she scrambled to get out of the way in time. Having four legs came with advantages, but agility wasn’t one of them – especially if you weren’t so familiar with having to dodge attacks. 

As Tauna watched, vision slowly clearing, Kiraoi seemed to keep on dodging even when there was no attack, running as fast as she could in wide circles around her opponent. It was working, too – as long as she kept moving, he wouldn’t be able to land a solid hit, and the path she took drew him away from Tauna and Azurill, both of whom would have been much easier targets. Catching on to how this trick was going to work, Drowzee stopped trying to spin round to follow her and stood still, waiting for this new target to grow tired and slow down.  
It took a while, longer than Tauna had expected, but eventually this prediction came true. Kiraoi was still running, yes, but her circles were getting closer and closer to the centre, and it would only be seconds before she’d be close enough that Drowzee would be able to lash out, taking her down in a single blow. There was nothing she could do from her spot lying on the ground, nothing except shutting her eyes and bracing herself for the end to come. 

Instead, she heard another crash and a much less feminine cry of pain than she expected. Looking up again, she saw Drowzee lying flat on the ground, struggling against Kiraoi’s vines, which were wrapped all around his legs and torso. Kiraoi was visibly shaking with the exertion, but she held on, and it was only a few moments before the pressure on his ribs forced Drowzee to go still. 

The rest of the day passed in a blur of pain, but eventually Tauna found herself curled up in bed, Oran Berry poultice held in place around her head by a tight layer of bandages. The pain had been ebbing away ever since a Guild medic had first rubbed the thick cream into her temple, and by morning she’d been promised it would stop hurting entirely. 

Still, the physical pain wasn’t the only concern she had to overcome before she’d be comfortable enough to get to sleep that night. Kiraoi taking over like that was wonderful, of course, and it was so good to see the timid Chikorita start overcoming a few of her fears, but Tauna still felt bad that it had been necessary for Kiraoi to fight at all, and – she knew it had been a lie, a ruse to get her to let her guard down so he could attack, but seeing Drowzee cry like that had still been a shock. 

It was so easy to lash out when she was out in the field, so easy to hurt other people. They were bad people, yes! People who’d done bad things to other Pokémon, who’d stolen and cheated and lied and been violent towards people who couldn’t defend themselves as well as she could, but that didn’t mean they didn’t feel the pain she inflicted upon them. Kiraoi was terrified at the prospect of hurting other people, Wigglytuff and Chatot were always so clear on the importance of rehabilitating Pokémon they’d apprehended, so why did she find it so easy to just ignore that? Was this just who she was? The sort of person who took pleasure from hurting others?

There was also the fact that it was rare for missing Pokémon not to have at least one friend or relative who would have noticed they’d disappeared, who would alert the Guild or whatever their local equivalent was that they’d lost a loved one, to cry out for their safe return. She checked the missing persons board every morning, checked the board with missions dealing with Pokémon who’d lose possessions or gone missing far outside of Treasure Town, but her search had been fruitless so far. No matter where she looked, nobody was crying out for the sake of missing a human woman who’d disappeared. Either nobody had noticed that she’d vanished from her previous life, or there were Pokémon somewhere out in the wide world who knew but didn’t care. Might be rejoicing, even, that she’d left their lives for good. Even the criminals in Treasure Town weren’t without friends, and not just because it was safer to raid dungeons they travelled in groups – she’d lost count of the number of messages that had come in from relatives or friends of Pokémon the Guild had captured, explaining the reasons why they’d committed those crimes and asking for lenience. Had she been so terrible, such a monster before, that there was nobody even willing to go that far?

Frustrated, she rolled over onto her other side, hoping to shift into a comfortable enough position to get some rest. There would be more work to do tomorrow, and Loudred’s wake-up call didn’t need to be any more obnoxious than it already was.

The minutes passed, and with a groan she eventually relented to the inevitability of another sleepless night, rolling off the bed and making her way over to the door.

“Tauna? Where are you going?”

Hand still resting on the doorknob, Tauna turned back to address her sleepy partner. “I … I’m going to go for a walk, okay? You get back to sleep.”

Shaking her head, Kiraoi pushed herself up onto her feet, hooking the thick curtains away from the window to let the bright moonlight into the room. “Aren’t you tired? We’ve been working hard all day – you need to get some rest, Tauna. Is something bothering you? Have … Have I done something wrong?”

Tauna trudged over to her bed and sat back down, too tired to stand up for what could be a long talk. “You haven’t done anything wrong. I’m just feeling a bit out of sorts – I don’t sleep well most nights, it’s nothing to worry about.”

“What’s making you feel unsettled? Is it from the fight today? Do you want me to go and get you some more berries, for your headache? Do you think you might have another of those visions?”

“No, no, it’s none of that.” Why did Kiraoi have to be so curious? Tauna would work this out by herself sooner or later, and there was no need to get anyone else involved in her concerns. Besides, how would Kiraoi be able to understand what she was going through? Kiraoi wrote to her parents on a weekly basis. She could remember her own hometown, her own childhood friends, what she’d done with her life prior to arriving in Treasure Town, the goals she’d had in mind when she decided to come here. But … Kiraoi was kind, and patient, and would be willing to sit and listen while Tauna explained. It was worth a try, if nothing else.

“Tauna?”

“Do you ever worry about how easy I find it to fight with people? To, to hurt them?”

Kiraoi frowned, tilting her head to one side. “Not really? We’d really struggle if you couldn’t, Tauna – I wouldn’t be able to handle all of the fighting by myself. I’d never have gotten my Relic Fragment back, and we’d never be able to go to so many dangerous places with the Guild, and ... I’m sorry, I hadn’t realised you were upset by that. I’m getting better though, aren’t I? I know I’ve been letting you down so far, but I’m doing my best!”

“No, no, it’s not your fault! It’s me, it’s whether or not I’m enjoying it too much! Do you know where I came from? Do you know how many people go missing without anyone who cares enough to post a missing person’s notice for them? What if I’m here as a punishment? What if I was a criminal before, and the only way the people I hurt could think of to punish me was to turn me into a Pokémon and strip my memory and throw me into the sea?” Forcing herself to stop talking, Tauna screwed her eyes shut, pressed her face into her hands, and waited for the verdict. 

Kiraoi made a considering sort of noise, but Tauna couldn’t bring herself to look back up.

“You’re worried you were a bad person? When you were a human? Because you do so much fighting now?”

She nodded.

“Did this just crop up today, after Drowzee? I haven’t noticed you looking at that board any more than the others, but I’d never really thought to pay any attention to that, Tauna, what with Chatot still assigning most of our missions and everything.”

“No, it’s been a while. I know it’s ridiculous, so I just didn’t want to bother you with it, I guess.”

“Tauna, it’s not ridiculous if it’s upsetting you! It, it can’t be _true_ if it’s upsetting you!”

Looking up, Tauna saw no hesitation on her partner’s face. “Why not?”

“Think, Tauna! If you really were a bad person, then the idea that you might have hurt people in the past wouldn’t bother you at all! When have you ever hurt Pokémon who weren’t trying to attack us, or someone else who couldn’t protect themselves as well as you can? All you’ve done since you woke up on that beach is help people – you helped me get my Relic Fragment back from those bullies, you’ve helped other people at the Guild, and your vision today helped save Azurill, didn’t it? We’d never have gotten to him that fast if you hadn’t been able to warn people that he was going to go missing, would we?”

“No, but that still doesn’t tell us what I might have been like before. I have the Guild, and you, and there’s no reason why that couldn’t be what’s making me want to help people, instead of it just being something I’d be doing anyway.”

Kiraoi’s smile slipped from her face, and her gaze drifted towards the ground for a moment, before she shook herself and looked back up. Reaching out with one vine, she started to stroke Tauna’s shoulder, keeping safely out of the range of her back flames while still providing comfort. “You’re my friend, Tauna,” she said, voice as calm and certain as Tauna had ever heard it. “I don’t believe you could have been a bad person before, even if you did have to hurt other people to keep yourself safe and to protect people you … people you wanted to protect. Would it help if we talked to the Guildmaster in the morning, maybe? I don’t know where you could go to find out about your past, but if anyone can tell you where to start looking for those answers then Wigglytuff definitely can.”

Tauna nodded, settling herself down onto the pile of hay as she felt her eyelids start to droop. “That would be helpful, yeah.”

As both Pokémon fell into the comforting embrace of sleep, a storm raged on outside. Under the cover of this storm, another Pokémon, more alone and with more to be afraid of than Tauna had been that evening, worked on. She didn’t know it yet, and neither did Wigglytuff (although they would never get around to asking him the question the next morning, or the morning after, or any morning after that), but her questions would be answered soon enough.

**Author's Note:**

> There's a scene early in the game where Partner reassures Hero that the fact that their dream saved Azurill means they obviously must have been a good person before they became a Pokémon. Seeing as how Hero never seems to have been all that worried about that in the first place, I always thought that scene was a little odd, so decided I'd take a shot at explaining it.


End file.
